Tunnel way back machine: Council once liked surface option

Gov. Chris Gregoire is flanked by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims in January 2009 as they announce the tunnel agreement. (seattlepi.com file photo).

In two weeks, Seattleites will decide the fate of Referendum 1, which depending on who you talk to will ultimately decide the fate of the tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Or not.

In the run up to the Aug. 16 vote I’ve been researching some of the news articles written prior the January, 2009 decision to go with the deep bore tunnel. Given the frantic pace of daily reporting, even going back two or three years feels a bit like stepping back into Paleozic age, but there are some interesting tidbits.

My old Post-Intelligencer colleague Larry Lange reported in December of 2008 that some on the Seattle City Council were leaning toward, or at least speaking positively, of the now hated (at least by eight of the nine current Councilmembers) surface options.

(Councilwoman Jan) Drago said she thinks council members will endorse a variation of one “surface” replacement option that would disperse traffic over six lanes on Alaskan Way and Western Avenue, through a series of traffic signals and into the Battery Street Tunnel.

That option, estimated to cost $900 million exclusive of yearly maintenance and operation expenses, would involve additional transit service and the addition of a northbound lane on Interstate 5 to handle the traffic.…..That option is “basically the council’s plan,” Drago said Monday after more than two hours of briefings from viaduct staffers. Conlin said the eventual pick may combine elements of the surface option and others and council members will discuss it after the choices are narrowed to the three semi-finalists.

Councilman Tim Burgess said traffic-analysis data from the three agencies tells him any of the eight options could handle traffic without causing major congestion on I-5. Analysis of the surface options shows “that it’s very viable and protects freight mobility,” he said.
Later in December of ‘08 Lange reported that there was some momentum for a hybrid tunnel/surface option.

A combination of surface streets and tunnels, possibly with tolls, could be the best way to replace Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct, business and downtown representatives said Monday.

The new option also raises its own set of questions.

Until now city, county and state officials have listed tunnels and so-called “surface and transit” replacements separately, though always saying they’d consider some combination in recommending how to replace the 1953-vintage viaduct.

Monday was the first publicly known move to attempt a combination of elements from anyone on the committee set up for feedback to government officials and not for decision making.

Tayloe Washburn, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce representative on the committee, circulated a description calling the surface-tunnel idea a “grand compromise” that could provide new open space on the waterfront and maintain traffic capacity, and suggesting it be studied further.

Finally, in January 2009, Gov. Chris Gregoire, Seattle and King County leaders signed off on the deep bore tunnel idea.

….The pact to build a deep-bore tunnel under downtown Seattle stems from a yearlong study of solutions for replacing the central section of the viaduct. Officials said thousands of hours of technical analysis, public meetings, and letters and e-mails from the public, interest groups and local jurisdictions were considered.

Gregoire acknowledged that some will oppose a tunnel — as some did, protesting outside the building where the new project was announced — but she called the proposal something “a majority of people” do agree with…..Gregoire said the state, city and county would each pay cost overruns from their individual parts of the replacement work.

That was before the state Legislature added a clause to the authorizing Legislature requiring that Seattle pay for cost overruns on the $2.8 billion tunnel project, which the state is paying for. Tunnel supporter say that “stick-it-to Seattle” addition is unenforceable.

David Brewster at Crosscut has a nice examination up Tuesday of how we got from there to here on the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement – The Big Bore and the Big War.